Chapter 5
EIRA
It’s holding.
The old crone’s potion is holding.
Thank fuck.
Relief hits first, fast and sharp, loosening a knot beneath my ribs I hadn’t fully admitted was there, because I don’t feel peeled open the way I did the last time I was in Valentin Moretti’s presence. I don’t feel my blood singing some ancient, treacherous song only he knows how to hear.
My scent is muted, wrapped in whatever vile magic Selphine forced down my throat, and I cling to that as I stand twenty feet from the most dangerous vampire in New York and fight to keep my heart rate even.
Slow the pulse. Smooth the face.
Let him see Eira Cross, Tier Seven bounty hunter, not Lyra Hannigan, eighteen and shaking beneath the weight of a claim she never agreed to.
He never saw my face properly that night.
That’s the one mercy I have, the one fragile advantage I can’t afford to waste, especially now that I’m standing in his glass tower with nowhere to hide and the full force of his attention moving over me like a blade.
Because Gods, he’s real.
For six years, Valentin Moretti has existed in rumour and nightmare, impossible to find in photographs because vampires fracture and distort through modern lenses.
Now he stands in front of me, not the half-formed terror of a girl’s bedroom, but flesh and power and lethal, devastating beauty.
Immaculately dressed in black that looks cut for violence rather than fashion.
His stillness has weight that belongs to a creature who knows exactly how fast he can kill and has no need to prove it.
His face is sharper than I remember, all controlled arrogance and cruel sensuality, dark hair precisely cut, pale eyes bright enough to look metallic in the dying light, his mouth built for command, punishment and the sort of carnal devastation I rarely allow myself to acknowledge but can’t hide from now.
He’s beautiful. Potent. Sexually lethal in a way that makes heat curl low in my belly before my mind can crush it, and that betrayal infuriates me as much as the fact that part of me remembers his voice near my bed, his fingers in my hair, the way the air changed when he inhaled near my throat and decided I was his.
I drag my gaze away before it lingers long enough to damn me, letting him think I’m assessing exits, weapons and angles, which I am, just not only that.
The irony of ironies tickles me before I smash it away, but yeah, this is a new one.
I’m a bounty hunter being hired to hunt… myself. By a vampire who claimed me with the carelessness of a roulette chip he won at a betting table. With every fibre of my being I want to probe why he’s looking for Lyra. For me.
But his eyes are on me, precise and assessing, and every instinct I own tells me one wrong question, one visible tremor, one betraying rush of blood could unravel six years of running. So I keep breathing. Keep my posture loose and my expression professional.
The potion holds. My heart, by some miracle, doesn’t claw its way out of my chest. And if Valentin Moretti senses anything beneath the woman standing in front of him, anything familiar or female or fated, he gives me nothing but that cold, watchful silence.
I break the silence before it becomes a weapon. ‘Five million?’ I echo. ‘That’s more than ten times the agency’s going rate.’
‘Which should demonstrate just how little interest I have in negotiation or delays.’
‘Or how badly you hate being told no.’
His gaze tightens.
‘It’s also a whole load of shiny but wasted dollars if I come up empty,’ I add.
‘You won’t.’
‘That sounded dangerously close to confidence in my abilities. I’m touched.’
‘It was confidence in my selection process.’
‘Ah. There he is.’
One dark brow lifts. ‘You disapprove?’
‘I’m deciding whether to be flattered or offended.’
‘Choose quickly. I have limited patience for theatrical uncertainty.’
‘That must make mirrors awkward for you.’
Something flickers in his eyes. Amusement, maybe. Or warning. With creatures like Valentin Moretti, the line between the two is probably written in blood and revised hourly.
I stay where I am, keeping the door in my peripheral vision, my body loose, my heartbeat steady. The price has been named. The parameters set. Ten million reasons to remain in this room instead of walking out and vanishing again.
Or trying to.
Because he doesn’t want a hunter. Not really. He wants compliance wrapped in professionalism. He wants me to feel the imbalance, taste the power, step forward out of greed or defiance and convince myself either one was my choice.
I don’t move.
Outside the window, the last of the sun bleeds behind the skyline.
I glance at it despite myself. ‘So daylight really is just an inconvenience for you?’
His mouth curves faintly. ‘Still thinking about that?’
‘Hard not to. I grew up believing sunlight was one of the few mercies humans had left.’
‘Humans believe many comforting things.’
‘Do you practise sounding ominous, or does it ooze out naturally after the first century?’
‘The first century teaches restraint. Ominousness is merely a consequence of surviving long enough to stop explaining oneself.’
‘That’s tragic. I love explanations.’
‘No,’ he says softly. ‘You love information.’
My pulse gives one hard kick. I smother it.
He catches the smallest change anyway, or maybe I only imagine the slight narrowing of his eyes. Either way, my skin tightens beneath his attention.
He’s cataloguing me. Strength. Balance. Threat. Value. His gaze lingers a beat too long on my mouth, my throat, the collar I forced myself to wear even though I hate every fucking inch of it, then the line of my jaw.
I don’t flinch. I won’t give him that. ‘You’re staring,’ I say.
‘So are you.’
‘I’m assessing.’
‘As am I.’
‘Great. Mutual objectification. Very professional.’
‘Is that what this is?’
‘What else would you call it?’
‘Instinct.’
That creeps too close to things I refuse to name.
My bedroom. Darkness. His voice. The way my body reacted before fear swallowed everything else.
I crush the memory flat.
This is a job. A dangerous one, yes, but also a lucrative one, if the potion holds and I keep my head. Enough money to buy time, reinforce anonymity, stay hidden longer than I could’ve managed on mediocre retrievals and spite.
I haven’t been given much of a choice. Fine. I can turn a trap into freedom. I hadn’t known that useful but terrifying information about vampires and daylight, that age and power change the rules.
‘That fee buys results,’ I say, letting Eira Cross settle fully into place. ‘It doesn’t buy obedience.’
His expression remains smooth. ‘I don’t recall asking for obedience.’
‘No. You just assumed it came included.’
‘You mistake certainty for assumption.’
I swallow a snort. Barely. ‘And you mistake money for leverage.’
‘Money is leverage.’
‘Not always.’
‘With most people,’ he replies.
‘I’m not most people.’
‘No,’ he says, his gaze moving over me again with unsettling precision. ‘You are not.’
The room seems to deepen around that quiet admission.
Outside the window, the city dims as the sun finally slips below the skyline. The change is subtle but unmistakable, like the world has shifted to accommodate him rather than the other way around.
Night has claimed him again.
This is when his power settles fully into place.
When creatures like him stop tolerating uncertainty and start correcting it.
Does Selphine know about the age and daylight issue?
If so why didn’t she tell me? Cos I sure could’ve done with a heads-up about that.
The oldest vampire I’ve bagged was 158 years old and that fucker had been so terrified of getting sun-fried he’d offered me a pouch full of precious gems to wait out the day with him before hauling him in.
If Valentin Moretti could brazenly stand in the light, then he was…
very old indeed. A very disturbing thought.
If this goes wrong, there will be no one to intervene. No rules. No witnesses that matter.
Good thing I’m very good at saving myself.
I’m already recalculating my next move when his voice cuts cleanly through the room.
‘Come here, Miss Cross.’
My heart stutters.
Tiny. Barely there. A brief spike of awareness before irritation rushes in to smother anything that might look like weakness.
Reflexive obedience. Old and unwelcome.
I straighten, jaw setting, then turn towards him with one brow lifted and a look that’s earned me scars and respect in equal measure.
‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ I say. ‘I don’t take orders. And I don’t come when I’m summoned like a poodle.’
The corner of his mouth lifts, but it’s sharper than amusement. His eyes gleam, silver catching low light, and for a fraction of a second my nerves scream a warning I’ve learned never to ignore.
Glamour.
I brace for the pressure behind my eyes, the subtle slide of someone else’s will trying to overwrite mine.
Nothing happens.
No drag. No intrusion or distortion.
Whether that’s Selphine’s potion doing its work, Valentin choosing restraint, or worse, toying with me, I’ve no way of knowing. Every option unsettles me as he reaches for a slim folder on the desk and holds it out, presenting it less like an offer and more like a test.
‘I assure you, you’d much prefer to come here and take this from me than for me to bring it to you.’
I look at the name on the leather tab.
Lyra Hannigan.
The irony hits harder still and I almost laugh.
Instead, I cross the room and take the file without letting my fingers brush his.
Investigating myself. Tracking my own disappearance. Hunting the ghost I became.
Professional detachment has never felt thinner. ‘I’ll be in touch when I have something.’
‘No.’ The word is calm. Final.
I look up slowly. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You’ll return here or wherever I wish to meet in seven days,’ he says. ‘And every week after that. You’ll deliver your report in person.’
Even my patience has limits. ‘Even if I have nothing to report?’
His attention sharpens like a blade finding bone.
‘You completed a retrieval in Belfast in five days that should have taken a month, dismantled a cult cell of rogue wolf-shifters in Prague who were harvesting adrenalised human blood to amplify their lunar shifts without triggering a single casualty alert, and brought in an aberrant wolf elder from Marseille while the agency was still arguing jurisdiction.’
My face stays smooth. My stomach sinks.
‘Not having anything to report,’ he continues, ‘will be regarded very badly, Miss Cross. It would render the assurances your superiors have made me… questionable.’
There it is. Confirmation, cold and heavy. ‘You’re leaning on the agency,’ I say. A statement, not a question.
‘It’s in their interest to ensure I receive a premium and expedited service,’ he corrects mildly. ‘You have near-unlimited resources. Use them wisely, but use them fast.’
The unspoken consequences hang between us, deliberate and suffocating.
I tuck the file under my arm. ‘Seven days,’ I say, not meaning it at all.
I fully intend to put at least a month between this meeting and the next.
I turn to leave.
I make it exactly two steps before the room shifts.
One moment he’s by the window, a dark, immovable presence at the edge of the city. The next, the door is at my back and he’s there.
Every instinct detonates.
He doesn’t touch me, but his arms brace against the door on either side of my head, caging me in without contact, close enough that I feel the heat of him through my clothes.
Heat.
Actual heat.
A shiver ripples up from my toes.
Aren’t vampires supposed to be cold? Every mid-to-low-level one I’ve bagged has been the wrong side of clammy.
But none of them was the hot-as-fuck Vampire King of New York City.
None of them smelled like crushed ice and blood-soaked roses, like dying under his feral attention might be a religious experience if his fangs were buried deep in my—
No. What the actual fuck?
My breath catches, but I force it steady. Eyes forward. Muscles locked. No blink. No flinch. No gift he hasn’t earned.
Then I feel him inhale.
Slow. Deliberate. Scenting.
My mind flashes to my bathroom mirror, every light turned on, the excruciating hour I spent checking every inch of my skin twice.
No cuts, nicks or torn cuticles. Nothing exposing me to the massive vampire crouched over me, the sheer magnitude of his power.
He can’t smell me.
He can’t.
I repeat it until the words become scaffolding, holding me upright while my heart hammers hard enough to bruise. The potion holds. It has to. I refuse to let fear unravel me now.
His presence presses in, intimate and controlled, awareness of him skimming my skin without crossing the line. Then he leans closer, just enough for his breath to brush my ear.
A second shiver follows the first, hotter, heavier, threaded with adrenaline and something wet and slippery.
‘Don’t let me down, Miss Cross,’ he says quietly. ‘Or there will be consequences.’
Then he’s gone.
The pressure vanishes so fast it leaves me dizzy.
I suck in a breath as he reappears by the window, back turned, the city reclaiming him like nothing happened.
I don’t look back.
I open the door and leave, fingers locked around the file.
My file.
My legs move on muscle memory until I’m out of the tower and the night air hits my lungs like freedom and threat at once.
Only then do I let myself breathe.